


The Little Light Between Them

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: Emergency! (TV 1972)
Genre: EMS Life, Gen, Heterosexual Life Partners, all good relationships are based on books, bob is a slob not a fool, dixie will give you medical journals if you're NICE to her, sexy librarian trope without the sexy or the library
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27283213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: Bob likes to read to wind down, he just doesn't want anybody to know about it.  Unfortunately, Craig turns out to be a lighter sleeper than he thought.Written for xcourtney_chaoticx for Ace Week (Oct. 25th - 31st)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	The Little Light Between Them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xcourtney_chaoticx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xcourtney_chaoticx/gifts).



Bob likes to stay up, sometimes, and just read. It's not as if a body ever gets a decent rest on the overnight anyhow - no matter if the night's a no-hitter, the brain's always popping up to the surface, always one ear cocked for the tone-out. So Bob stays up, and he reads. 

He reads dime-store paperbacks, biographies of presidents, the latest pick on the display at the library. He reads cardiology textbooks and the Journal of the American Medical Association and magazines from the California hospitals committee, and bulletins from the fire department. His eyes pass over the text, he nods along, sometimes he dozes, sometimes he just rests his eyes on familiar, comforting words like cardioversion and amphetamines, or treatises on the pros and cons of lactated ringers' versus normal saline. 

The rest of the station watches the late movie, or pokes around in the cabinets, or tries to catch some shuteye. Bob pulls out whatever ragged tome of the evening from under his pillow - or an old favorite from the little library in the back of his locker - and leans his brain on pacing and spacing and paragraph, and maybe learns a little something. There's medics, EMTs out in parts of the state he's met at the odd conference, who think there's nothing to be gained from journals or trade magazines except for the latest calendar of fire apparatus. Bob has always figured that in a hand of years they've gone from hearses pulling double-duty as the town ambulance, to real, meaningful, helpful pre-hospital care, so the world's changed, and it's gonna keep on changing. So he might as well pick up a little hot knowledge on the way, even if he doesn't parse it quite the same as Brackett or Early does. 

But nobody expects Bob "The Animal" Bellingham to be a book-learning sort of man, and it's only in the after-dark times, so really nobody knows, and nobody's thought to ask. Until him and Brice are assigned together. Bob doesn't especially want the nosey little four-eyes boggling at him like a zoo monkey over his reading habits, so he doesn't, and spends a particularly grumpy few weeks of shifts just lying in the dark staring at the ceiling. 

Brice sleeps like a ziploc bag - he's down for the count, and back out, with no in-between. Bob is caught between impressed, a little jealous, and a little unsettled. Brice beds down and he is out like a light and doesn't seem to need a beat to collect himself in the squad on the way to the call. It's eerie, and sort of unnatural, more than paramedicine usually is.

Finally, he's got to give in. He's going nuts just staring at the ceiling, listening to the TV in the dayroom, the creak and slap of the cabinets, the squeak and shuffle of the beds. Craig's asleep anyhow, and he's going to be out until they get a call, so he pulls a copy of the California Psychological Association's monthly bulletin from under his pillow and leans into the bedside lamp. 

"What're you reading?"

Bob about has a heart attack, Craig is awake, peering at him myopically, for once looking disheveled, a curious and half-endearing look. He looks young, propped on an elbow in his bunk. 

There is nothing to do but be honest. Bob shrugs. "Psychological Association's magazine."

"Still trying to figure me out?" Craig's voice is quiet. The shadows make it easier to talk, like in the squad, where you don't really have to look at your partner. Easier to talk about things. Bob decides that Craig is joking, which, in the last few weeks, he's been known to do. In the squad. In the dark. Not after 4am and not before 3am. Everywhere else, the kid - he's not, really, but Bob's out of the first paramedic class and Craig's a few classes down - is the same old Brice.

Bob thinks: maybe that's not at all unlike his reading, done in the secret spaces between calls and daylight. "Thinkin' about a vacation. These places in Norwalk and Napa, they look pretty nice. Nice and quiet."

Craig seems to be reckoning him. "You've dogeared the pages."

"They don't call me the Animal because I keep my books tidy, kid."

"Books?"

"Yeah, plural, what of it?"

"It's not an attack, Bob. I didn't mean - " Craig fumblingly, vulnerably, puts on his glasses. " - I'm sorry."

"Nah. Don't make a case of it. It's alright. It helps me wind down, is all. Better than the movie or seeing if the snacks in the cabinet have changed in the last five minutes."

"Oh."

"Hey, uh, listen." He swallows. Craig is still not known for being exactly warm and friendly, and the dark is a different time, and the space between two and four in the morning is never real anyhow. The guys left in the dayroom are muttering, and Lyle Cooper is snoring. "Listen, you remember that call the other day? With the diabetic? The Jewish guy, and you were wondering if it was kosher to use pig's insulin?"

"Uh. Yes."

"Well, I got this journal from Dix the other day, and it had an article, bout how some guys are studying making synthetic insulin ... if you want, you could borrow it."

"Thank you, Bob."

"Just one favor."

"Yes, Bob?"

Bob grins, through the little light between them. "Don't dog-ear the pages."

Craig doesn't laugh, exactly, not out loud. But Bob sees the hiccup in his throat, and the brightness in his eyes, and that's good enough for him.


End file.
